Time for corn chopping

Well the corn chopping has began. We have friends and neighbors who are helping us and it has been a huge blessing. The picture above is a picture of the corn field out behind the house, it was taken about a month ago. You can just barely see the cows at the end of the road in the picture, I think they were trying to figure out how they could get in the corn field. It has been a good year for us with corn, field corn and sweet corn.

My cat, Horatio, hangs out in this corn field about all day every day so since they are chopping this field now he is under house arrest. I wouldn't want anything to happen to him. He is not too happy about it though and is always trying to escape. I catch him peeking out of any window he can get into and when I know a lot of people will be coming in and out I have to put him in the bathroom. He will be very depressed when we finally do release him and his cornfield is gone.

I put up a lot of bags of frozen sweet corn and so did some of the relatives. The neighbor said we planted enough sweet corn for everyone on our hill. We tried to make sure everyone knew to pick some cause there was a lot and would hate to see it go to waste. We definately willl have plenty to make it through till next season. Hope it does as well then!

Getting canning and freezing done

It has been quite some time since I have posted on my blog or even read some of my favorites I like to read. I have a lot of catching up to do but the garden and farm keep me busy. We are now milking 84 cows. I never had plans to be milking that much I was quite happy with no more than 65 but the heifers keep freshening and now 84. Hopefully dry off time for some of the others will be soon and I can cut a little time off of the milking time.

I have been getting canning and freezing done. Yesterday was the first of the corn, it is finally ready. I put up 30 bags last night and hope to do a lot more of that tomorrow. Today will be shredding and freezing zucchini. I love zucchini brownies and bread and hope to make them throughout the winter. So far this garden season I have made dandelion, cherry and blueberry jelly, canned pickles, relish, beets and banana peppers. Also at the beginning I got some peas frozen but not enough going to plant way more next year. The tomatoes are ripening and I will be canning them and making some tomato and pizza sauce. My pumpkins look like they will be ready early and I read an article saying it will be an early apple season this year so I want to be ready for that, I want to make a lot of applesauce and I love apple bread and hopefully some apple pie filling. Whew, I better get to reading a couple of my blogs and get to that zucchini.

It has been some time

It has been awhile since I have posted. I am also way behind on reading the blogs that I like, I am trying to catch up on them. There is just always so much to do the computer definately takes the back seat.

Calves seem to be popping out almost every day. So of course now calf feeding time takes longer especially with all the bottles I have to do. We seem to be getting about 50% bulls and 50% heifers, I can live with that especially now because the bulls don't stay too long and that means less bottles to make.

We made it to pick cherries before they were gone and I was able to get some jelly made. The peas got picked and frozen and I have been picking cucumbers and zucchini. Soon it will be time to make pickles. I still want to be able to make it to pick some blueberries.

With all this sun and hot weather, hubby has really been at the hay. We usually make wrapped bales but with this stretch of no rain we are trying to make the dry hay we need and save the wrapped ones cause never know when the rain will come again, although I wish we could get a good rainy day right now. At least with the dry hay I don't have to help wrap it after night milking so that saves me time to do other things. The grass is about dead though so I guess that saves me time mowing the lawn. I love to go bare foot though and miss the soft green grass so for now it is flip flops.

Hope everyone is staying as cool as possible, we are surely trying. It is only bad when I get to milk and rub up against the sweaty cows. I tell them I am glad I am not a cow right now, poor girls!

Hay season has started for us finally

We have finally started our hay. We put in twice as much corn as we did last year and hubby finished planting that a few days ago and was ready to start mowing hay when the rain came. We needed the rain though so it was welcome. Today though he mowed a small field next to our barn and so hay season begins. Hay season always means late nights and quick dinners for us. We wrap a lot of our hay for baleage so usually after milking is done at night I go help wrap the hay. Alot of times we are finishing up around 10:00 or 10:30 so that is where the quick meals come in if you are even in the mood for anything at all or we grab a sandwich around 4:00 just before I start milking. Hope we can really get at it though because the corn planting put us behind a little and the fields are ready.

I did take advantage of a rainy day and made homemade spaghetti sauce and homemade bread, I love it! Sorta of like a goodbye to big meals for a while or until another rainy day comes. I even made a quick batch of cookies.

The garden is doing well and I am thinking this year will be a much better year than last year which will mean lots of canning and full shelves of home grown food. I am keeping my fingers crossed. I am a little disappointed with the strawberries I put in though only about half of them are growing but I guess I will stick some more in next year.

My son just loves the new little girl goat that we got. She ( he named her Shannon) slips right through the gate when she sees someone coming and comes to see us. My son loves running around the backyard with her. She follows him around when he is doing his chores also. Her brother stays in his pen and doesn't seem interested in following her, I think he figures he will get more milk while she is gone.

Well computer time is limited these days and I am pooped, the days go by so quickly with all I have to do. Enjoying it though and I hope everyone else is also!

New critters and lots of gardening done

It has been quite awhile since I have been on. I just don't have too much time for the computer lately. In fact I only got this time because I was going to weed the strawberries but it started to rain so here I am. My son is loving it because what used to be my computer time is now his.

I have most all my garden all planted but with a new garden spot this year and the old one I still have lots of room so I am going to find some more to put in. I wasn't going to do beets this year but they are going in now. I just can't see letting that space go to waste. I am not sure what I am going to do with the rest quite yet. If all goes well with the weather and we have a much better year this year then last I told my husband I should be able to can and freeze alot and still have a produce stand ( lol). My husband has most all the field corn pllanted and this year he put me in a lot of sweet corn. It will be a busy canning season this year. The DR mini tiller my husband bought me is great and is going to save me huge amounts of time weeding.

We are starting to have some more calves, we have had 4 in the last 6 days and it will only get busier from here. I have some new goats, 2 does and twin nubian kids, and I also have some new chicks. I was going to get an incubater and hatch my own but my neighbor has a huge one and he is doing quail and pheasant eggs and is doing some of my eggs for me. First we sent him a dozen eggs and got 7 chicks and now he is incubating 42 eggs for us. So this year I can save the expense of an incubater. He also brought me two baby guniea hens, he knew I wanted some more ( we have 2 now) and when he saw a sign for them for sale he got me 2. Lots of new crittrers around here. Of course a couple barn cats had some kittens also, we will be looking to get them a home if possible. Anyone need a kitten?( ha ha)

Well like I said it has been awhile being on the computer so I am going to catch up on reading some of my favorite blogs.

Busy, busy but enjoying it

I haven't been on the computer too much lately, there is just so much to do that I had to cut out the computer time. Lately my computer has been giving me fits also. A few days I had a new post ready to go, picture and all( and with dial up that takes awhile) and I got kicked off. I was so frustrated and it was too late to try again. Hopefully I can get some new pictures on soon.

After the cold(and even some snow) days we got about 4 days of rain but I have finally got some plants in my new garden. I put in broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce and some more strawberry plants that my neighbor gave too me. My new rhubarb and berry bush are doing well and so are the peas. My husband got me a DR mini tiller so hopefully I will be able to use that between the rows and really cut down my weeding time this year.

Yesterday we had a new calf. It was a holstein heifer calf. It has been quite awhile since I have had to bottle feed a calf, I was enjoying the break but soon there will be a lot more. There are quite a few cows bagging up and our busiest calving time is always around this time into July. I should be able to have lots of new baby pictures soon. Talking about babies, our baby goats are growing like weeds. I picked them up the other day and can't believe how much heavier they are and we have finally agreed on names for them, they are Maverick and Marissa. Their mom is March so we decided to keep the names all starting with an M.

We also sent away some chickens to be butchered and in the freezer. Now we only have 2 roosters crowing around here instead of about 10 of them. It is quite a bit quiter now. We are hoping to incubate some eggs soon instead of ordering new chicks this year.

There is just so much too do lately. I like being busy and love the warmer weather but some times I just need another set of hands or a longer day. Hope all is going well with everyone else. Well off to get the laundry done so I can spend my time tomorrow in between chores weed whacking.

My ducks are missing

Baby goats and their mama

I have been so busy lately it has been awhile since I have been on the blog. I attempted a couple of nights ago but my computer is being a pain. I wanted to add a few pictures from around the farm but I can't seem to get them uploaded so I tried just one and it worked. I figured I would put the baby goat pictures on. The one right up close is the little boy and the black one by mama is a girl. The little boy really liked his picture taken, I was hoping to get them all together better but he just kept wanting to hog the spotlight. We haven't decided on names yet, we all want different ones, but hopefully we will agree soon so it isn't the boy and the girl.

We used to have 9 ducks but that was a little too many for my backyard so we gave 5 of them to a friend and kept the 3 female blue swedish and the male cayuga duck. They did very well with just the 4 of them and I was glad that we kept them. Well a couple of days ago when I went out to feed them there was only one there. I thought maybe her friends might of just wandered over to the neighbors pond and she did not follow along so I would wait and see if they returned. Well the next morning there were no ducks. There were no feathers around or anything that would show a struggle or what you might think would be there if something decided to eat them. I can't believe they would leave we have had them for a year and we checked the neighbors pond and no ducks. I feel bad now that I didn't do something with the last one the morning I saw her. I almost put her in the coop with the chickens. We have roosters that wander around and they are fine. Poor ducks, I just wish I knew what happened.

I have been picking rocks in the new garden and still have a lot to pick. I think when I turn my back a new one grows. My husband ordered me a DR mini tiller so hopefully the weeding will go a lot easier this year cause I will be able to use that between the rows. Good news though the blackberry bush I planted has sprouted some leaves so now my son believes that I didn't plant a stick. I got my strawberries planted but I keep finding a cat that does not belong here sitting in them. So as soon as a get some time a fence will be going around them. Time is in short supply lately. Tomorrow is appointments and Thurs. we are taking some chickens too have butchered and put in the freezer. I just need a few more hours in the day.